Brian Morton: 'The trap'

Brian Morton, Baltimore City Paper

Last week I had the chance to interview an author who, with his own money
and on his own initiative, flew to Iraq to write about the soldiers on the
ground there. The author is a historian, his father was active-duty
military, and he has a long family history of relatives who served in wars
such as the ones the U.S. has waged in Korea and Vietnam, and World Wars I
and II.

Not being of the military persuasion himself, he had dedicated much of his
writing career to telling the tales of the people who served in these times
of stress. Soldiers, sailors, spies, and Marines--each service faces
different challenges in different wars. And with the advent of new
technology, every generation's version of a fighting man or woman has to
learn to cope with new things. In Prodigal Soldiers, James Kitfield's book
about the retooling of the all-volunteer military in the years between
Vietnam and the first Gulf War, one of the Navy pilots about to launch off
an aircraft carrier deck into the darkness of the nighttime Baghdad sky
says, "Goddamn, sir. I sure hope this stealth shit works."